OTAs shake Australia, but Flight Centre shows strength

Roy Morgan Research in Australia has found that online travel agents are not far behind market leader Flight Centre and are outperforming the other big high street players in the market.

The findings come out of the market research group's quarterly "State of the Nation" report, with the consumer findings based on some half a million interviews.

In the past year, 13 million Australians took a holiday, either domestically or internationally. Looking at actual bookings, Flight Centre is the clear leader, used by 9.4% of the sample to book their break.

But while Flight Centre dominates as a brand, Expedia Inc's portfolio of websites gives it a bigger share - its $658m purchase a year ago of wotif.com group means its presence in the market now includes Wotif.com (5.2%) and lastminute.com.au (1.9%) to go with the Australian versions of Expedia (3.2%) and hotels.com (2.1%), totalling 12.4%.

And its least-performing brand lastminute.com.au still outperforms established Australian high street agencies such as Harvey World Travel (1.3%) Escape Travel (1.1%), and STA Travel (0.7%).

Looking ahead to the next twelve months, Flight Centre has an even bigger lead over its competitors when it comes to what brand customers are considering using for booking their next trip.

Questions could easily be asked about conversion, although without readily available year-on-year comparisons it might be a bit of a stretch to be overly critical of Flight Centre for not showing as big a lead when it comes to bookings.

Booking.com for example will only be considered by 10% of the sample next year but was used by 5.8% of the sample this time, suggesting a much better conversion rate.

Roy Morgan has posted a YouTube video of CEO Michel Levine talking through the "Spotlight on Tourism" findings.